Do American Smarties Actually Come In Different Flavors?
The iconic American candy tablets, Smarties, have been around since the late 1940s and have grown to become one of the most recognizable sweet treats in the country. The plastic wrapping Smarties comes in is see-through, allowing children and adults alike to peek in and see the rainbow of colors inside. But is that coloring just for show, or does it mean something?
It turns out each of those colors has a different flavor; white Smarties are orange cream, yellow is pineapple, pink is cherry, green is strawberry, purple is grape, and orange is orange flavored. We'll let you be the judge on whether or not you can taste the difference. Regardless, each flavor is produced separately before being thrown together so that each roll gets a variety of colors and flavors.
How the Smarties get their flavor is a company secret. The ingredient list includes "natural and artificial [flavors]," which is a pretty obscure term. That said, Smarties has the merit of only including six different ingredients, the same recipe it's used for decades. As you might imagine, the primary ingredient is sugar in the form of dextrose, followed by citric acid and calcium stearate. It's an entirely dry ingredient list. No liquids are used to bind the candy together. The original machine used to produce Smarties was previously used to compress gunpowder, and it's a similar process to what they use today.
Smarties around the world
Americans may be surprised to learn that Smarties is a uniquely American candy. If you go up to Canada, you can find a candy made by the same company that uses the same color scheme on the wrap, but they're called Rockets instead. If you go to the grocery store and ask for Smarties candy in either Canada or the UK, you'll be handed something that looks more like an M&M. Before you get into a huff about who was here first, the British were. UK Smarties were born in 1937, a full decade before the American candy came about.
Canadian Rockets are flavored just the same as American Smarties – they're essentially the same candy, just with a different name. But you won't find American Smarties in the UK, only the chocolate candies known as Smarties. As it turns out, you can't find Smarties anywhere except in the U.S. But that doesn't stop them from making 30 billion Smarties tablets every year.